International Cybersquad Takes Down ‘Beebone’ Botnet – 10 April 2015

A newly-assembled international coalition of cyber cops says it’s hijacked a network of compromised computers that had been used by criminals to spread malicious software among at least 12,000 infected machines worldwide.

The Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce—an agency launched last year in partnership with law enforcement from the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union—said on Thursday this week that it’s seized the command-and-control server that had been used to operate the so-called ‘Beebone’ botnet.

By taking control of the server, authorities can now keep the botnet’s administrators from using a vast network of hacked computers to launch attacks. Security experts say that upwards of 12,000 machines have already been compromised since 2009, however, and that the operators of the zombie network had executed malicious programs through those computers to steal user data, including passwords and financial information.